Finally.....the first post!

My first post. It may be my last. We'll see how this thing goes.





December is such a busy month that it makes it very difficult to really enjoy the Christmas Season and keep our focus on the birth of our Savior Jesus. Both the girls had their annual school music recital as well as accompanying each other at their violin and piano concerts. Abbey was busy with a special Christmas dance show that she signed up to do with required extra classes on Sunday afternoons, a performance at the Mall and shows on back to back weekends. Maddi is playing basketball which has practice twice a week as well as a game on Sunday afternoon. Add these extra activities to regular schedule during the week of violin and piano practice, regular dance practice and gymnastics and tumbling class and you are left with a family that has one evening free during the week to do everything else. We also celebrated Abbey's 7th birthday this month with a carnival birthday party at Potorf Hall complete with games, tickets, prizes and a scary looking clown.

The cutest reindeer you will ever see!!


Happy Birthday Carnival.

School Christmas recital.

School Christmas recital.

Performing together at the Mall.

Maddi is the one in white in the center of the picture playing swarming defense! She is a really good defender, we just need to work on her shot and she will be good little player.


Christmas break was a welcome time as I had several days of vacation left to use and chose to use it while the girls are off of school from the 23rd to the 4th of January. I have really been looking forward to this time with the girls and some much needed snuggling on the couch! We started off our vacation together with a trip to Hy-Vee for donuts on Wed. morning. I took advantage of the time off to go for a 20 mile bike ride as it had been several weeks since I had that opportunity. I really enjoyed the ride aside from the rain, fogged over glasses with rain drops on them, and mud and grime from the roads all over my body and bike. I learned exactly why people put those nerdy looking fenders on their bikes! We finished the day off with an early Christmas dinner at Dale and Carolyn's house.

Christmas Eve has always been one off my favorite days of the year, it was always more exciting to me than Christmas day itself. It was a nice treat to be off from work this year and not have any place we had to go. We had a lot of snow and wind this year which made it nice to spend time together watching Christmas movies and warming up by the fire. We had an early dinner with Dale and Carolyn and then went to Mass at 6pm at Seven Dolars. It was the children's Mass which was nice to hear the children's voices singing. We walked out of Church and into a blizzard! It was awesome to see and made driving around looking a Christmas lights very festive. We ended our evening taking turns reading Christmas stories and the Nativity to each other, hung up our stockings and went to bed. Maddi pulled out one of her teeth during story time and was really hoping to see Santa and the Tooth Fairy on the same the night. However, Apparently the Tooth Fairly does not want to steal Santa's thunder and decided to come the next night.

Christmas morning!

The girls woke us bright an early by yelling downstairs for us to get up. I remember as a kid wanting to get up as early as possible Christmas morning and Cristen and I were always the ones who went around and woke up everybody else. As an adult I now understand how my parents felt. Maddi admitted she had woke up every two hours and finally couldn't go back to sleep. Abbey carried Jesus from our Nativity downstairs this year since Maddi got to put on the tree topper. We always put Him on the fireplace hearth and sing Happy Birthday to Him to begin our celebration. The girls are always very patient and take turns opening their gifts, nothing like the way we did it at our house. We just tore into stuff rarely looking to see what anybody else received. Abbey was very thoughtful and brought Amy and I our stockings before she dug into hers. She is always a very thoughtful kid and always looking to serve..I pray she never looses that trait.
Within an hour all the gifts had been unwrapped, there was crap everywhere and the girls were upstairs engulfed in the make believe world of Barbie. A land where the whole reason they want a particular Barbie is stripped from them in seconds and put on other Barbies in Hodge podge combinations. Some are even left laying there...naked. Barbie princesses are dressed like Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus is wearing Snow White's dress but still has her knee high boots on. Maddi asked specifically for a Wizards of Waverly place Barbie that has clothes that change color with a majic wand. Shortly after trying it she decided she didn't like the clothes...now they just lay there with no Barbie attached to them. She won't even put them on the naked one.
The girls spent hours in their Barbie world as Amy and I spent our Christmas day shoveling snow out of the driveway because we couldn't drive over the drifts. Later in the day we packed up and headed out to Cristen and Eddie's house to celebrate with them as well as Mom and Uncle Jon...Oh and we can't forget Julian! We had a nice visit, ate some great food and then headed back home.







Today started with a special birthday breakfast for Dale's 71st. birthday. We invited He and Carolyn over for waffles that we made with our new waffle maker that Kenneth and Judy gave us for Christmas. We had waffles and played a game of Monopoly. In the afternoon I played in the snow with the girls and created two igloos from the huge piles of snow that were left after shoveling our driveway. It was a little demoralizing to be shoveling this snow again for the second time, only to remove it from the pile that we had worked so hard to put it in. But the girls made a Little fort in there and will most likely play in it everyday until the snow melts so it was worth the effort. Dale and Carolyn joined us again for a birthday dinner and watched a movie and played more games. It was a great day but I have now realized that 5 of my 14 days off from work are already gone and I just cannot believe how fast a day goes by when you are not at work ....very disappointing! I look forward to the week ahead and the time that I will get to spend with the family!

Drinking hot chocolate in the snow, they called these their "Special Supreme" and they both had two orders.